Netherlands and Belgium followed other European destinations in campaigning to attract Chinese tourists to art and culture. The Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions (NBTC) and Visit Flanders, a Belgian destination marketing organization (DMO) collaborated to offer Chinese tourists an artistic Eurail vacation to start the 2018 China-EU Tourism Year.
The plan was presented during a conference on November 22 held at Beijing's 798 Art Zone. During the conference, the tourism board showed the classic cultural railway tour which will start in Rotterdam and ends in Brussels. During the tour, there will be stopovers in six cities popular for their art and culture. The cities will include Delft, The Hague, Ghent, and Antwerp. The tour will give the tourists time to enjoy each location. The trip package is worth $121, traveling for eight days in a month including discounts in some attractions.
According to Sina, a Chinese media outlet, the partnership will also include Qyer.com, a Chinese online outbound service provider. Qyer.com will act as an arm that will invite participants to the Eurail trip. The experiences of the tourists during the Eurail will be exhibited in Beijing in March 2019.
Belgium has been good with China in terms of tourism. Recently, the country's Hey! Belgium, an online travel agency, started customized individual and group tours for Chinese. Ctrip, released statistics indicating that Chinese tourism in Europe increased by 35 percent year-on-year during the first quarter of 2018. Chinese tourism to Belgium also increased by 13.1percent year-on-year from May to August 2018. The Netherlands is also hopeful that the Chinese tourism will increase because of the Eurail.
On March 20, 2018, Hainan Airlines started flying its Shenzen-Brussels direct flight twice weekly which started on March 20. It adds to its current flights connecting Belgian capital, Beijing and Shanghai. The airline now has 10 flights per week. Currently, visitors to Rotterdam needs to land in Amsterdam first since there are no direct flights from cities in China and Rotterdam.
The NBTC reported that the Netherlands accommodated 364,000 Chinese visitors in 2017. It increased by 28 percent when compared to last year. The total number of visitors in 2017 is twice the number in 2011. CBS, a Dutch national statistics office reported that the number of visitors visiting the nation's capital dropped by 9 percent year-on-year to around 64,000 in the first four months of this year.
